obsessively sharing my every thought

Dark Matter – Blake Crouch

I did manage to get through one more book on my vacation (thank you, 7 hour wait in the airport!)… I read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and, HOLY BALLS, it was INSANE! It was a mind-bender that kept you on your toes! That isn’t to say that it wasn’t predictable. I guessed most of the book’s happenings during my reading before they took place. *Spoilers ahead* Example- I guessed it was another Jason that kidnapped Jason Original before the book made it clear….

If you haven’t heard about this book I will try to explain… (try is an operative word; I won’t do this justice…) So, the book introduces us to a man, Jason Dessen, and his lovely family at the beginning. It gives us background that Jason and his wife met 15 years ago and decided to stay together after finding out she was pregnant. He gave up a very promising science career and she gave up a promising art career. Fast forward to current times, Jason is abducted during a walk back to his home by a masked stranger. This stranger leads him to a warehouse where he is forced to change clothes and also is drugged. When he awakes, there are people all around him celebrating him and “his arrival”. After some discussion with a handful of people, he panics and breaks out of the compound. Confused and disoriented, he goes to the hospital (where he then has to break out because they want to commit him). After that, he finds that, even though he remembers it distinctly, he is actually not married, nor has he ever been. He finds he “wife”, who is now a very successful artist, and confesses to her his situation. After a passionate love-making session, he is found by the people from the compound and they murder his “wife” and abduct him again.

Finally, he is to understand that this is not “his” reality. Some how, he was transported to a parallel universe where he never chose to stay with his wife when she got pregnant. After some outside assistance, he was able to break out of the compound again, but this time he is to use the machine that will allow him to decide what universe he wants to in. From there, the book shows different universes and it becomes Jason’s fight to return back to his.

All in all, this book, at it’s roots, is a love story. This guy, taken from his own life by an old (but grown) version of himself, fights to get back to his reality with his wife and child. Now, I have to say that I didn’t love Crouch’s writing style. There were a lot of one sentence paragraph type of entries. It seemed very basic for such an advanced topic. It made it seem more basic than it should have.

At the end, it was a total mind fuck! (sorry, but no other way to describe it!) Suddenly, Jason is forced to try to be one step ahead of himself in, what seems to be, a thousand ways! I won’t give away what happens, but just know that suddenly he is up against more than just one terrible thief of a Jason.

My biggest complaint of this book is that we never know what reality Amanda chose! I would have liked to know more about her, or to have had them run into each other again.

Overall, I would suggest this books to others. Despite being a little predictable and (in my opinion) simple writing, I really thought this book did a good job of drawing the reader in.